Amazon Pushes for B2B Sales with American Express Partnership

Amazon is famous for being “customer obsessed,” making leaps and bounds to satisfy their “divinely discontent” shoppers. But a customer is not always a single person browsing the Amazon marketplace for AA batteries and a new toothbrush. The retail giant has been working over the past six years on catering to a very lucrative (although less exciting) type of customer: businesses.

A brief history of Amazon B2B

In 2012, Amazon launched AmazonSupply, which was given a redesign in 2015 and renamed Amazon Business. Today, companies can sign up for Amazon Business for free, giving them access to hundreds of millions of products, bulk discounts, and 2-day free shipping on orders over $25. Other features include the ability to add multiple users, have shared payment methods, receive pallet shipping, see purchase analytics, and upgrade to Business Prime shipping. As of last July, Amazon Business was serving over one million business customers.

Moving forward

In an effort to reach more businesses, Amazon has partnered with American Express and announced plans to release a co-branded credit card. According to the press release, the card will “enhance the way small businesses buy goods and services across Amazon, and is part of a larger multi-year partnership.” AMEX’s partnership with Amazon also plans to give businesses “greater insight into their purchasing activity, as well as a continued global card acceptance relationship.”

The press release calls out ties to Amazon Business, stating that “this integration seamlessly provides businesses with line-item detail on their Amazon transactions, enabling more efficient monitoring, control, and reconciliation of Amazon Business purchase transactions made with American Express® Corporate Cards or Corporate Purchasing Cards in the U.S., and allows customers to run more advanced analytics.”